Welcome to Edition #113 of Gorick's newsletter, where Harvard career advisor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Gorick Ng shares what they don't teach you in school about how to succeed in your career.
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→ Read time: 5 min
STORY
How Salesforce found its former COO
You may have heard of Salesforce—one of the largest tech companies in the world, with over 76,000 employees today.
But what few people know is that behind that big name is a story from its early days that offers a valuable career lesson for all of us.
It’s 2001. Salesforce is just two years old and only has about 170 employees. That’s when an MBA student named George Hu joins as an intern.
Soon after starting, Hu sits in on a meeting—and hears one of the executives complaining “that Salesforce didn’t have a full understanding of its customers, despite being in the customer relationship management (CRM) space.”
Immediately, Hu has an aha moment: If not even the leaders of the company have a clue of what’s going on, what if I gave it a shot?
After the meeting, Hu starts analyzing the company’s sales process and the effectiveness of its marketing spend. He discovers that most of Salesforce’s new users were coming through word-of-mouth referrals, not the expensive digital ads that Salesforce had been spending heavily on.
Hu pulls together his findings and sends a cold email directly to CEO Marc Benioff.
“I sent a note out to the CEO at the time, Marc Benioff, and said, ‘Hey, here’s my analysis of the problem’—even though I was an intern.”
The response?
In Benioff’s own words, “We were shocked and none of us could believe how much money we were wasting.”
Salesforce immediately stopped spending on print advertising and began investing more in its sales team to increase customer follow-ups.
And just as immediately, Hu saw his career skyrocket. “Benioff called me into his office and said, ‘Let’s talk about your future career,’” Hu recalls. “‘I’m going to start guiding your career personally and moving you up through the company.’”
True to his word, Benioff became Hu’s mentor—rotating him through departments every 18 months and helping him build a reputation as someone who could solve “unarticulated needs.”
Over the next decade, Hu launched Salesforce’s first small-business product, built a reputation for solving hidden problems, and climbed the ranks to Chief Operating Officer—helping the company become one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
What does this mean for you?
The next time you’re weighing the prestige of a big-name company against the access and opportunity of a smaller team, remember George Hu. Sometimes, joining early means you can do more—and be seen more.
UNSPOKEN RULE
Look for big impact in small places
When picking where to work, it’s easy to pick the biggest name, the highest valuation, the most well-known brand. After all, labor market signaling (which I define in my jargon dictionary here) is totally a thing. But what they don’t realize is this: the bigger the company, the harder it is to stand out.
As talented as George Hu must have been, it’s hard to imagine him standing out and making an impact in the same way as an intern when he’s one of 76,000 employees. It’s simply easier to meet people, propose ideas, and pretty much get any job title you want when you’re in a small place.
In a small company, cold emailing a VP or even the CEO isn’t a political minefield—it’s just Tuesday. You're not one of many; you’re one of a few. And when the company grows, so can you.
By working in a smaller place…
…If you're early in your career…
- You’ll have an easier time getting in because the HR processes aren’t yet set (important if you’re a freshman or sophomore who isn’t yet eligible for many of the big internships!).
- You’ll be closer to the higher-ups, giving you a front-row seat to (and a voice on) big decisions.
- If you demonstrate your Three C’s consistently enough, you’ll basically get to pick whatever job (and job title) you want.
…If you're in your mid- to late- career…
- You could end up with a more senior role than at a larger, more recognized institution, especially if you came from that world.
- You’ll get to spend more of your time building—and less time navigating bureaucracy, politics, and the “that’s just how things have always been done” mindset of a more established place.
- You’ll get to make your business case directly to the founder or CEO—rather than be screened out by AI for being too old, too expensive, or too out of touch.
As I share in one of my favorite stories on how the largest tree in the world got so big, career success is all about finding a nourishing environment where you’re not constantly competing for resources. That’s what George Hu did.
See you next Tuesday for our next story and unspoken rule!
—Gorick
What’s an “unspoken rule”? They’re the things that separate those who get ahead from those who stumble—and don’t know why. You can learn more about these rules in the workplace in my Wall Street Journal bestselling book called—you guessed it—The Unspoken Rules.
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Sources:
- In 2001, Salesforce had 170 employees. Today, it has over 76,000 employees.
- Salesforce is just two years old
- George Hu joins as an intern.
- digs into the data and discovers something
- He writes up his findings and cold emails them
- rotating him through different departments
- "I sent a note out to the CEO at the time"
- “Benioff called me into his office”
- becomes Chief Operating Officer.
- “that Salesforce didn’t have a full understanding of its customers”
- “We were shocked and none of us could believe how much money we were wasting.”
- Salesforce immediately stopped spending on print advertising
- Cover image
- Hu, then COO of Salesforce, in 2012.
